The Last Cavalier: Being the Adventures of Count Sainte-Hermine in the Age of Napoleon. Alexandre Dumas

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      SIX WEEKS HAD PASSED since the two girls had visited the prophetess living on Rue de Tournon. Mademoiselle de Beauharnais had, in spite of her tears, married Louis Bonaparte, and that very same evening Mademoiselle de Sourdis had been going to sign her marriage contract with the Comte de Sainte-Hermine.

      Mademoiselle de Beauharnais’s repugnance for her marriage might lead one to believe that she was repulsed by the First Consul’s brother. That was not the case at all. It was simply that she loved Duroc. Love is blind.

      Louis Bonaparte was then about twenty-three or twenty-four years old. He was a handsome young man—in fact, he resembled his sister Caroline—though he appeared to be a little cold. He was well educated and had true literary instincts. Upright, kind, and very honest, he never for a minute presumed that the title of king in any way changed the rules and duties of the human conscience. He is perhaps the only prince who, reigning over a foreign people, elicited at least a bit of gratitude and love in his subjects, just as Desaix had done in upper Egypt. He was a just sultan.

      Before we leave that loyal-hearted man and the charming creature he was marrying, let us say that the marriage happened suddenly, for no other reason than for Josephine’s incessant hounding.

      “Duroc,” Josephine told Bourrienne, repeatedly, “would give me no support. Duroc owes everything to his friendship with Bonaparte, and he would never dare stand up to his protector’s brothers. On the other hand, Bonaparte has great fondness for Louis, who has not the slightest ambition and never will. For me, Louis will be a counterbalance to Joseph and Lucien.”

      As for Bonaparte, he took this position with Bourrienne: “Duroc and Hortense love each other. Whatever my wife might do, they are a good fit and shall marry. As for me, I am fond of Duroc; he comes from a good family. After all, I gave Caroline to Murat and Pauline to Leclerc. So I can surely give Hortense to Duroc, for he’s a fine man, as good as they come. As he is now a major general, there is no reason to oppose this marriage. Besides, I have something else in mind for Louis.”

      However, the same day the girls went to consult Mademoiselle Lenormand, Hortense, urged on by her friend, tried to enlist, and ensure, the support of her stepfather one more time. After dinner, finding herself alone with Bonaparte, she knelt down gracefully at his feet, and using all her feminine charms on the First Consul, she told him that the proposed union between her and Louis would mean her eternal unhappiness, and while giving full justice to Louis’s virtues, she repeated that she loved only Duroc and that Duroc alone could make her happy.

      Bonaparte made a decision.

      “Fine,” he said. “Since you insist on marrying him, marry him you will, but I warn you that I must set some conditions. If Duroc accepts them, then all is well. But if he refuses, then this is the last time I shall go against Josephine’s wishes on this subject, and you will become Louis’s wife.”

      Walking briskly, as he did when he had made a decision, in spite of any unpleasantness his decision might provoke, Bonaparte went to Duroc’s office but failed to find him, the eternal idler, at his post. “Where is Duroc?” he asked, visibly upset.

      “He has gone out,” Bourrienne answered.

      “Where do you think he might be?”

      “At the Opera.”

      “Tell him, as soon as he returns, that I have promised him to Hortense, that he will marry her. But I want the wedding to take place in two days at the latest. I shall give him five hundred thousand francs. I shall name him commander of the eighth military division. He will leave for Toulon the day after his wedding, and we shall live separately as I do not want a son-in-law in my house. I do want to have this matter settled once and for all, so tell me this evening if he is in agreement.”

      “I don’t believe he will be,” said Bourrienne.

      “Then she shall marry Louis.”

      “Is she willing?”

      “She has no choice but to be willing.”

      At ten, on Duroc’s return, Bourrienne communicated the First Consul’s intentions. But Duroc shook his head. “The First Consul does me a great honor,” he said, “but I shall never marry a woman under such conditions. I prefer now to take a stroll near Palais-Royal.”

      With that, Duroc picked up his hat, and with no apparent concern he left. His attitude, to Bourrienne’s eye, only served to prove that Hortense was mistaken about the intensity of the feelings the First Consul’s aide-de-camp had, or pretended to have, for her.

      The wedding of Mademoiselle de Beauharnais and Louis Bonaparte took place in the little house on Rue Chantereine. A priest came to bless their union. At the same time Bonaparte had him bless Madame Murat’s marriage.

      Far from occasioning the sad atmosphere that had hung over poor Hortense’s wedding, Mademoiselle de Sourdis’s wedding held every promise of light and joy. The two lovebirds, who were apart only between eleven at night and two in the afternoon, spent all the rest of their time together. The most elegant merchants, the most popular jewelers in Paris, had been ransacked by Hector to produce a collection of wedding presents worthy of his fiancée. The opulent offerings were the talk of Parisian high society; Madame de Sourdis had even received letters from people who wanted to view them in person.

      Madame de Sourdis had been expecting no more than a simple agreement from the First Consul and Madame Bonaparte, so she was in a tizzy about the favor he had bestowed upon her by proposing to come and sign the marriage contract himself. It was a favor he granted only to his closest friends, for it was of necessity followed by a gift of money or a present, and the First Consul, not a stingy man but by nature more thrifty than generous, did not spend money like water.

      The only person less than pleased with the honor was Hector de Sainte-Hermine. Bonaparte’s show of honoring his fiancée’s family worried him. Younger than his brothers, he had never embraced the Royalist cause as actively as they had, but in spite of his admiration for the First Consul’s genius, Hector had not reached the point where he truly liked him. He could not put out of his mind his brother’s brave but painful death and all the bloody details that accompanied it, or the fact that it was the First Consul who had ordered it and who, in spite of strong pleading, had refused to grant a reprieve or pardon. So every time he met Bonaparte, he felt his face begin to sweat and his knees weaken, and against his own will he would avert his eyes. He feared one thing only, and that was to be forced some day, by his high rank or his great fortune, either to serve in the army or to go into exile. He had warned Claire that he would rather leave France than accept any position in the army or civil service. Claire had said it was totally up to him, that in such an event he should do what he needed to do. All she had demanded of her fiancé was that he would allow her to accompany him wherever he might СКАЧАТЬ